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let me hear your battle cry tonight! >> it was pitched to be, hey, god's calling on your live. i was, like, i want to hear god's calling on my life. >> there's no religion in the world that talks about changing somebody's heart. >> down. >> we're not going to show compassion to you. >> let's go. you know you like it. >> parents that are sending their kids to these fun-sounding retreats have no idea what is actually going on in those woods back there. basically, if you're not beating your body and making it your slave, you're not a good christian. >> by that time, my body, i believe, had begun to shut down, and i wouldn't have survived if i had stayed. >> whoever speaks up most gets to shape the culture! >> i feel like a bull fighter, like i'm out there with the red thing, and my goal is to jerk that out so that when they come, they run right into jesus.

>> i had heard about teen mania when i was in high school. i think it was even in junior high when i first started to hear about their youth conferences. as a teenager, i was really intrigued by the fires and by the battle cries. i just found the congregation of people to be really intense and really powerful. there was always lots of lighting and lots of sound and lots of music, and so it was very -- looking back, it was almost trance-like. it was very kind of out-of-body

experience. and that was framed in a way that it was spiritual. it was a religious experience. >> the honor academy is a yearlong program here at the ministry of teen mania industries. it's designed for young people to take a year of their life, usually between high school and college, and building on the foundation they've already got but growing deep in their christian faith and learning some personal discipline. >> good evening, and welcome to esol. i commend you for your courage tonight to present yourselves on this field. i would remind you, as you experience emotional, mental, or physical pain, the pain is simply weakness leaving your body. we are not going to feel sorry for you. please do not feel sorry for yourself. you won't last long if you start feeling sorry for yourself.

>> this was the first time that she had seen me in a couple months, and she just realized that there was something really wrong. >> down. >> by that time, my body, i believe, had begun to shut down. and she decided to take me to the doctor, and the doctor that i saw actually spent a huge amount of time with me, and she just asked me if i wanted -- if i wanted to go back, and i said i don't want to go back. i wouldn't have survived if i had stayed. >> we know that people do their best learning not in a classroom but actually get out of a classroom and go experience real life. we want them to have nontraditional learning experiences. they have a lot of traditional learning experiences as well in lecture, but we want them to

goat out and learn some things about themselves that are not normally things that you would experience. >> i'm not very good at being yelled at. when i get yelled at, i tend to shake and really quiver and i fear if i do that, they will make me do pushups or make me work harder. >> pay attention! you are a loser! >> the generation has lost some of the fight that our previous generations had to have even to make this nation what it is. so events like esol help to reinstill some of that, that you can give more than you think you can, especially if you're relying on the strength of the lord. >> is it the standard to be afraid of the lord? >> no. >> i guess it is the standard to be afraid. the standard needs some help here. are you going to help the standard here? once you get in, you can take them off of you, but you need to get in first. you need to ring the bell. don't touch my friend. you need to ring the bell.

we need you in that hole right now. once you get in there, you can take them off, but don't hurt them. >> when i got back from texas, i couldn't leave the house and i couldn't wash dishes. and i remember looking down into the sink of silverware and thinking, i can't do this. for such a long time it was just make it through the day. and i just had this panic rising within me because i was trying to remember who i was before teen mania and i just couldn't. i think that was a divining point for me where i realized that a lot of things have changed. >> anxiety has a way of generalizing and spreading when it's out of control so that a person doesn't know what may set them off at any time so they begin avoiding everything. >> so you don't know quite what to expect when you go to texas? >> well, i'm interested in other people's experience.

>> is there anything about it that particularly makes you nervous? >> yeah. a lot of things. it's the idea that they, like, manipulated me the first time around and kind of were able to surpass my ability to think and reason. that scares me the most. >> my thoughts about going back to texas are that she would almost feel compelled at some point to do it in order to prove to herself that she could master it. i think it's normal that she would have some doubts and reservations. >> let me hear your battle cry tonight! >> it was like a drug. i was hooked. i just got started and i'm like "hey, that first 20 came off, well it wasn't too hard at all." i love breads. you can still eat bread. i love my sweets. i can still have a cookie on weight watchers.

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how are you? >> i'm good. how are you? you doing okay? >> so far, so good. >> all right. cool. >> i left teen mania 12 years ago, and the first six or seven years coming out of teen mania there was a lot of turmoil, a lot of confusion, a lot of condemnation. and i started to get into therapy after a couple of years and started to work through the issues and really dig and go through the recovery process. and the last five years are -- i haven't really thought about teen mania all that much, i was working and got married. and then a friend of a friend got me to go to a cult seminar, about how cults work. and i thought that's interesting. i'll go and listen. i was really surprised that what they were describing was what i experienced and the recovery process and the symptoms of coming out of a cult life were all things i had gone through. and that was a real light bulb moment for me.

>> learning to live in the real world again, that's so hard. >> it is hard. >> and you keep -- or at least i did, i kept trying to make everyone conform to my way of living, like, what i thought christianity was, and when they didn't, i thought they're lazy, they're not really saved. i'm the only one that's really saved around here. >> i got saved when i was 18. i didn't really know what god was. i was just going to church as more of a social thing at the time. i didn't really care about my relationship with the lord. but once i experienced it, it was like a drug, i was hooked. it was amazing. it definitely was life changing. >> let me hear your battle cry tonight! >> whoever speaks up most gets to shape the culture. >> i'm looking at a whole army of young people who want to

speak out! >> the acquire the fire event is 27 hours. it starts friday, all day saturday, saturday night. it's a weekend event where you kind of get detoxed from all the messaging that's crammed down your throat, with all of the media that most kids are watching and, you know, submerged in, and extract them away from that long enough and give them a chance to hear the message of the bible in a way that's culturally relevant to them. >> say to lord jesus tonight. >> tonight. >> i turn away. >> i turn away. >> from the world. >> from the world. >> the garbage. >> the garbage. >> that has destroyed me. >> that has destroyed me. >> i turn away from sin. >> i turn away from sin. >> and i come to you. >> and i come to you. >> this year, we had almost 13,000 people together in an

arena just worshipping the lord, and it's like a sound that i've never heard where you see thousands of teenagers, you know, that are really caught up in different things, just saying no to those things and really turning to the lord. so it's just an awesome experience for me. >> it was just a really life-changing experience because i've never really heard god's voice intensely. i was just sitting down and i was sitting down with the group and stuff and just really heard god speaking and said, i want you to go. i was, like, okay. >> what if you were the generation that by using your voice -- >> there is also a lot of data out that the younger people are that hear the message, the more likely they are to respond. so i thought i want to get to people before they're most likely -- we humans, we think we're smart, 21, 25, we don't want to change our minds even if all the logic is there. >> so i have a question for you today. do you have a voice?

>> yeah! >> if i've done everything that i'm known to do with a pure heart to communicate the message of christ, then it's really awesome to go, look, they're really responding to give their heart to the lord. >> once i saw the behind the scenes, it became very fake because it was all planned and it was all very much staged, and it lost this sense of honesty and this genuine feeling that i had thought as a participant. >> honestly, i feel like a bull fighter, like i'm out there with the red thing, and my goal is to jerk that out so when they come, they run right into jesus. because jesus changed my life when i was 16. and i prayed a thousand times, lord, whatever you did to me when i was 16, the thing you did

inside this broken, messed up kid, just do it to them. if you could just change them the way you changed me, their life would be a million percent better. >> educating people is the first step on the road to recovery, learning how this happened, you know, how they did it. that's the first part of it. >> you know, how old were you when you first heard about teen mania? >> the first acquire the fire i went to i was 18 and i actually got saved. >> that's really pretty much the classic age for recruitment into groups like this because, you know, it's right at that -- on the cusp of, i'm about to go out

on my own. >> how did you become involved in it? how did you hear about it? >> acquire the fire, i went with my youth group from the time when i was a sophomore through senior year. so i was used to it, looked forward to it every year, would wear my wrist band for, like, months after ward. >> i went to my first atf when i was 13, and didn't think about it again until i went to an atf when i went my senior year and heard about it in a more personal life. it was pitched to be, like, hey, find out god's calling on your life. and i was, like, i want to know about god's calling on my life. >> the first time i went they had just started the school of worship, and i played guitar and sang and i was, like, that's perfect. so it was a combination of a lot of things. everything -- honestly, everything looked appealing about it. >> right. >> i went to my first acquire the fire when i was 15.

i was in the ninth grade. i just wanted to do something with my life, for it to have meaning. and the honor academy seemed like that fit the bill. you know, i was going to go work at this christian ministry, worshipping god, doing all of these things that counted for eternity. that's why i went there. and, of course, it didn't end up being anything that i was expecting. >> he talked me into it and made me feel guilty. bye dad. drive safe. k. love you. [ chirping, buzzing continues ] [ horn honks ] [ buzzing continues ] [ male announcer ] the sprint drive first app. blocks and replies to texts while you drive. we can live without the &. visit sprint.com/drive.

why are you crying? what are you scared of? are you the standard? >> it's pretty small. >> you want a ring? >> sir, no, sir. >> you want to use the wimp-out card? as of now you are wimping out. go ahead and climb back up. you wimped out. esoal, which stands for the emotionally stretching opportunity of a lifetime, is a life-transforming event. >> for me, the beginning of the end was esoal. everything about esoal was

really bad. i guess i was able to take the abuse myself, but seeing other people having to take it, as well, i just couldn't deal with that. and that was kind of the epitome of all the emotional abuse coming to the surface as well. that just really opened my eyes to what was happening. >> i remember, we got to sleep on the pavement for like an hour, and they would wake you up and make you go jump in the lake or wake you up and make you get in a pool filled with ice-cold water. >> everyone was really cold and we were all wet and stuff and we were shivering to the point where our teeth were chattering. and it was like the introduction where dave would get up and it was the first time we had seen him during esoal and everything. and i remember he said, stop shivering. you sound disgusting. and it's, like, dark and it's just a scary environment.

>> okay. you're going to have to eat some of this. >> we're going to keep them moving. as soon as your team is done -- >> don't do it or you'll have just as much more. don't spit them out. we'll make you eat them even more. >> i want you to eat one handful. >> let's go. you know you like it. come on now. let's go. let's go. we're not having social interaction here. >> you could say "fear factor" meets navy s.e.a.l.s training. "fear factor" they don't know the exercises. meets navy s.e.a.l. training. it's really intense. you can ring out and you're required to give more than what you think you can give. it's creating a surreal environment where you can

discover things in you that you didn't know were there. like, wow, i'm a quitter. i shouldn't be. or, wow, i can give more than i've got. and with the hope of having them discover that they can dig deeper and trust in the lord more than they thought they might give up. you take a surreal moment like that and hopefully get an eternal moment in their life. >> i didn't want to do esoal, and then he talked me into it and made me feel guilty, made me feel like crap, and i told him my knee -- he said, no, god will carry you through. you need to do esoal. i'm, like, i don't think i can. and they basically forced me into doing it by making me feel really bad. then when i was in esoal, like,s there was many points before i rung out that i was, just, like, hysterical and crying.

and, like, the leaders, they weren't being encouraging. they were, like, you want to ring out? you're going to leave your company here? is that what you're going to do when things get hard with your relationship with the lord? you're going to just ring out of it. like, they were very emotionally abusive, and that was, like, i knew i had to ring out and get out of here. >> with us, you have to go to work the next day and if we run out at a certain time, there was no rest or recovery unless you finished esoal. so it was almost like you were doubly punished for quitting. >> when they get a commitment one of the churches say they're coming, they get to ring the gong and everybody cheers for them. so that might mean 15 or 20 kids are coming from that youth group that will have a chance to, you know, have their life changed. you can see this picture up here with 36,000 people. about 15 of these guys put all

those guys in the seats. so if you're an 18-year-old and you walk in and you go, god, use me to help get these 60,000 people here or whatever, wow. and then all of the ministry that happens. it's really teen mania. it's teenagers being used to -- whether it's change the world, you know, on mission trips or change their generation here. in america. >> there is a shift and b shift. for the ministry placements. and a shift is, like, 9:00 many the morning till, you know, dinnertime. and then b shift is after lunch till, like, 10:00 at night. >> dave pulled all of the graduate interns together to have a meeting because there weren't enough calls being made in global expeditions to get teens out on the mission's field. so we're moving all of the manpower to ge. >> that's like that in all the call centers. the acquire the fire, the honor

call academy center and the ge call center. that's all they care about. they tell you if you're not meeting your goals, you're not praying enough, not being spiritual enough, you know, you're not working at this hard enough because you're not reaching this goal. >> my year was september 11th, and we had a huge mass exodus of kids, you know, that were in global expeditions, they were going to go on mission trips that summer and just completely backed out. and they did this whole, we're in a war, this is wartime. what? which means that we were working overtime. so we were given new schedules, completely new schedules. we were working ten-hour shifts instead of eight-hour shifts, and we didn't have to fill out our accountability cards anymore. >> you guys didn't have class, either, did you? >> we didn't have class. we didn't have to fill out the accountability cards because we weren't accountable for going to church or reading the bible. >> right. >> wow. >> let me see if i can understand something. you paid to be there each month.

plus, did you get paid for working? >> no. >> you would work ten hours a day but -- >> yeah. and you had to volunteer to work those extra hours, but of course everyone did it because you were required to volunteer. and you were -- i think when we first started out, we were required to make 90 calls a night. >> it's like a business. it sounds like a business. >> yeah. >> that's how it works. >> but really the truth is, a business treats its employees better. you know, you don't require all that overtime and impress people like that. >> it was even, like, getting up to the bathroom. you didn't have enough time. >> i had to ask to go to the bathroom. ask if i can go to the bathroom like i was a kid in school. >> so this is your opportunity to do something different with your summer. >> when we were working, we wouldn't have, like, air conditioning on very high. it would probably be, like, 85 in the building. it would be very hot. there would be 100 people on the

second floor in a small -- in a workplace but a small workplace. i felt like it was overcrowded. and that was a normal day. but for a tour, the air conditioning would be on. all the cubicles would be cleaned. fans would go away. when we had campus visits, i felt like it was -- we just would lie. >> not everything in this culture is going to be good for me. it's like candy with poison in it. it really looks good, but it's going to kill you. but phillips' caplets don't. they have magnesium. for effective relief of occasional constipation. thanks. [ phillips' lady ] live the regular life. phillips'.

the red cross was down here all the time. [ man ] they've given us a lot of heart. in times of need, they're there. ♪ [ kerry ] my dad was watching his house burn. he turned around, and all of a sudden, there was this guy standing there from the red cross. at a point where i had just lost everything, the idea that there was someone there... that's an amazing thing. ♪

hi. president george h.w. bush is spending christmas in a houston hospital because he developed a fever. originally the 88-year-old was going to spend the holiday at home. he's been hospitalized since thanksgiving with a bronchitis-like cough. good news for nelson mandela, south africa's president saying he's looking much better and doctors are happy with his progress. ben affleck and john kerry will not run for massachusetts's senate seat.

now back to our special documentary. i have learned a lot of things with my walk with the lord. like i've learned not to be in fear of man, just getting rid of like, different stumbling blocks in my life, just getting rid of a lot of things that are in my past and just being able to grow closer to him. >> honestly, the only person that i can think of emulating is jesus christ. i think there are skills that we can pull from people, skills that we see, okay, i want to grow in that area. but in my perspective i feel like those people are just following hard after jesus, quite honestly. >> there are things that don't teach jesus or the teachings of bibles. if we're going to call ourselves followers of christ, being known as those who are identified with him, then we need to be able to go, you know what, not

everything in this culture is good for me. it's like, it's like candy with poison in it. it really looks good, but it's going to kill you. >> robert lived and wrote really the basic book about reform. in that book he described what he called the eight conditions of the thought-reform environment. we're going to look and we're going to see if teen mania fit those conditions at all. if it did, then you've been through a process of thought reform. you can call it a cult or not a cult. i don't care what you call it. you've been through thought reform. you've had that done to you. >> geographical distance is a huge one. i mean, it's kind out out in the middle of nowhere. it's not really by any significant city. >> right. >> the closest one is 20, 30 minutes away. there's nothing around the campus. >> right. >> so right there you are isolated.

>> communication. >> huge. >> i didn't talk to my sister. she thought i didn't want to talk to her. part of it was i didn't have the time. you had the 15-minute rule. and the only phone that you could use or i had access to was in the middle of the hallway in the dorm. so i couldn't openly speak to my parents and tell them how i was feeling or what was going on. >> you step out of your own reality. especially the western mind-set of reality and you really just experience the realities of the rest of the world. you know what i mean? just taking away simple things like commodities, american electronics and whatever, and getting that out of the way and seeing, like, what really does matter. >> they actively promote the idea that ron and dave are this magically annointed -- you know,

dave would tell the story as soon as the internals arrived, this elaborate story where he almost died in africa and this woman prophesied to him that he was going to miraculously recover and then his job was to sweep the aisles out of the lives of young people. that god was sent him to do this. so whatever he says is automatically credible. and the same thing with ron, there's this mystical thing around them that you automatically believe whatever they say. >> i never asked people to become christians. i asked them to consider becoming followers of christ. people who would want to be known as christians, we ought to be following christ with all of our heart. and when that happens we ask him to forgive us, live inside us, a miracle happens. you can't describe it with words. it's not just about going to church or saying a chant. it starts with an encounter where you invite him to take over your life and he forgives you. the bible calls it being born again. you get a new heart.

you condition even explain it. you can try, but it's a miracle. >> i feel like they are trying to teach you to be perfect, you know. >> right. >> there's nothing wrong with accountability because i think we all need that in our lives. >> sure. >> but they take it to an extreme. >> he always tells the interns that you should always be fasting something. >> oh, wow. >> because that will help you keep your flesh in check. so whether it's fast food for a while, then fast movies or fast talking or whatever, you should always be fasting something. >> well, fasting was sitting apart three days to fast food and really pursue what the lord is doing in our lives and just kind of spend that time doing what he's calling us and hearing sessions from speakers that come to us. and then at the end we all get together and break fast together and just kind of talk about what the lord did in our lives during

that time. >> you do have to have an accountability partner. like, it's a requirement. and so you're supposed to practice confession with them. >> they would say to us, even if you have the thought of doing something, you need to tell somebody right away. go and tell somebody. >> right. >> even just the thought. and i'm, like, that's kind of weird. just because it's a thought doesn't mean i'm going to act upon it. >> and if you are real, you show a genuine concern, it's immediately shot down with, oh, well, this is the answer to that instead of, well, let's approach this genuinely. just, like, oh, well -- >> so they had stock answers for everything? >> yeah. >> i was willing to believe anything they said because they were obviously more spiritual than i was. what do i know about god's voice? that's half the reason i went to the academy, to learn more about god's voice. >> anybody else?

that's pretty strong right there. >> david hasz gives this definition of honor as the total conglomeration. he said that the whole bible is summed up in honor. we have the honor council and honor code and the honor ring. it's this whole -- you can't even question -- isn't it really about honor? what about, i don't know, love? >> so here we are in texas in the rain in camouflage panchos carrying a cross down the side of the road. when i'm the one cooking, i'm the one calculating the points. i can microwave things. you get to eat real food. we still get to go out. we're just so much smarter about it. we can keep each other in check. going, "okay, i see you." we've lost about 110 pounds together. it helped our love life. happy wife, happy life, right? right. [ jennifer ] weight watchers online. the power of weight watchers completely online. join for free today. time for citi price rewind. because your daughter really wants that pink castle thing.

and you really don't want to pay more than you have to. only citi price rewind automatically searches for the lowest price. and if it finds one, you get refunded the difference. just use your citi card and register your purchase online. have a super sparkly day! ok. [ male announcer ] now all you need is a magic carriage. citi price rewind. start saving at citi.com/pricerewind.

they had the thing where they made you guys walk on the freeway? >> a crosswalk. i did that twice. basically, what would happen is they would wake you up early in the morning, blindfold you, put you on a bus, you're not allowed to talk.

of course you can't see anything. after several hours, they would drop you off in different locations in groups of seven or eight. and we got dropped off -- our first year we got dropped off in oklahoma. the rules are you cannot have a watch, you can't have money, you cannot ask any question, and you could only take a ride for 20 miles at a time. and you had, like, two days to get back to campus, just on prayer. >> what was the point? >> and you had to carry a big cross the whole time, too. our first year -- the second day, we went to this church. it was raining. of course, we had to walk. they gave us camouflaged ponchos so here we are in texas in the rain in camouflaged ponchos carrying a cross down the side of the road. okay? if that doesn't look like a cult, i don't know what does. >> unreach people group, we get basically get separated into two groups, we're missionaries and travel people. so the travel people, we have a big campus out in back, 400

acres. the tribal people go out there and as the missionaries, we get the opportunity to role play and reach them with the gospel. it's so much fun, even though we know them. >> they had this refugee camp up in the woods that we were supposed to go to. and if we didn't make it there in time, then facilitators came after us and they were able to drag us to the jail, which is the lady's shower house. and these are, like, tiny ass showers, and you had to sleep on the floor and didn't have blankets, of course, because it was jail. >> it's not sanitary. >> how long were you there? >> i was in jail, like, 12-ish hours, i think, because i went to jail at like 4:00 in the morning, something like that. >> you were in that shower stall jail for 12 hours? >> mm-hmm. >> i'm sorry that that happened to you. >> uh-huh. >> that's horrible. >> that's really abusive. >> at the time, i thought it was great.

>> did you really? >> mm-hmm, because i was, like, i'm spending time with jesus. i just really thought it was hardcore sounding to say i spent my birthday in jail. >> what strikes me is when y'all tell this, you kind of laugh and it seems real lighthearted. >> you sort of smile, yeah, and instead of -- >> no big deal. and i'm sitting here horrified. >> mm-hmm. >> parents that are sending their kids to do these fun-sounding retreats have no idea what is actually going on in those woods back there. >> yeah. >> this is abusive behavior. >> yeah. extremely. >> you know? and no parent -- no normal healthy parent would ever want their child to go through that. >> did any of y'all tell your parents this story? >> i just started talking to my parents about the internship after reading the blog. >> you know, a lot of people told me that they don't want to tell their parents what happened because they don't want their parents to feel guilty for

sending them there or for not -- you know, they don't want their parents to know what they went through because it's too heartwrenching. you know, i think that's why i write the blog, too, because there are a lot of stephanies out there and a lot of hollies and a lot of micahs. and none of us deserved to be treated that way. >> i understand some people have felt really hurt. their negative experience may be because they so desperately don't want a "in your face" challenge that they are going to say, well, that's negative. why would you ask me to do that kind of thing? that's why i say honor academy is not for everybody. >> beating your body, according to teen mania, would be to ignore any discomfort from, like, exercise. basically, if you're not beating your body and making it your slave, you're not a good christian. >> all of that stops you from

critically thinking what are really my needs, what are my desires, what does got want for me in this situation? >> the thing is dave hasz says you have to think critically. think critically. so it was very confusing and critical. >> it was like, be a critical thinker but follow us. >> don't question anything. >> right. >> we're trying to train young people to think critically. some of the ways we do that, for example, anytime i teach, i tell the young people don't just listen to what i say and think that it's true. you need to think about what i'm saying, you need so say is it in the bible what i'm saying? does it prove true in life experience what i'm saying? don't go out there and say, dave hasz says this so i think that's true. >> basically, i felt like they didn't want us to have emotions. they just wanted us to be these happy people all the time, and they didn't really care what was going on inside of this. >> i think teen mania does this and a lot of christians do this but especially teen mania.

they associate whatever is a normal human emotion or interaction or development as worldly so then you have to abstain from it. and they just categorize everything, even, like normal, healthy development, basically robbing you of your humanity. >> mm-hmm. >> we hold a high moral standard here. it's all biblical. living a life of excellence and discipline. all of this is under an overflow of the love of god. so it's just really -- you see interns coming in and see different things that they are struggling with. so we adequately deal with these cases with a counseling program and mentorship program. we'll put them on a growth plan, different things like that, different issues that they're struggling with. >> you're really not allowed to have an opinion that ice n's no

by the majority of the group. >> because what would happen if you did have your own opinion? if you voiced your own opinion? >> in -- the most minor thing that would happen is you would be judged by your peers or looked down upon. but if it got all the way back up to leaders, if it was a serious enough disagreement, you know -- >> the fix-all solution was just tell them to leave. >> so we can stop the questions. >> exactly. >> let's engage in critical thinking and look at the issues and decide for ourselves. you can't have any of that. >> no. >> there was no sense of who i was. i had completely lost anything and everything that was my identity before. >> what do you mean? >> well, there was -- i had no needs or wants or desires or goals outside of what teen mania told me that i had. i guess a good way to put it would be soul murder. i know that might be extreme, but i think that's a way of defining it.

>> when i think about who i was in high school and before teen mania, it's -- it's almost like i'm in mourning, and that's been a huge part of my own sort of recovery process, is this idea of grieving for who i was, because so much of who i was i feel was taken away from me or in some cases suffocated to the point where i just didn't think that that part of who i am was ever going to come back. >> when i'm doing things that are going to cause problems -- >> that was ten years of my life, you know? all of my 20s.

after people have been

through a thought reform process, sometimes they'll have outbreaks of crying, of anxiety, panic even for no apparent reason, depression, even suicidal thoughts. >> ten years ago i would have checked almost all of these. >> yeah. >> all my college years, this is a description of my college years. >> oh, this whole thing? >> yeah, the whole page, you know, avoiding things, being incredibly irritable, having intense feelings, being numb, finding it hard to trust people, feeling detached, losing interest, always on guard, always, absolutely. >> i just had a lot of avoiding symptoms. i can't stomach a worship service anymore. it's not like anything bad happened in worship necessarily but it just reminds me of that and i can't stomach it. >> i'm just looking at the check list and thinking, yeah, i do

have some of these symptoms. i think it's the whole avoiding the thoughts. like even the thought of teen mania. i think i'm just now realizing that, that that's what it was. >> the purpose of esoal is to create an environment that is safe yet pushes people physically where they are beyond and emotional. by that i don't mean we don't want people to have problems after esoal. >> but in terms of the process of thought reform, all eight of them were active and are active at teen mania. >> great. >> it pisses me off that i fell

for it all. >> is that your fault? >> no. >> no, it's not. >> i think the only thing that we're all guilty of is wanting to be good people, wanting to be good christians and wanting to help other people. >> yeah. >> that's what we're guilty of. >> they took that and used that against us and there's no reason for us to feel -- >> yeah. >> -- bad about that. >> exactly. >> we were just kids. >> this is a lot to swallow, isn't it? >> yeah. >> but it wasn't your fault. >> now, the honor academy is not for everyone and if you don't want that challenge, you know, probably not a good place for you to come. we want you to rise up and become leaders of your generation and in order to be a leader, you need to know how to deal with very intense situations.

>> it's taken me a decade to get to that point where i have -- i'm opening up and i'm having friends. because even two years ago, i didn't have a social life. i didn't socialize. that was just something i wasn't comfortable doing yet. >> you felt so alone and felt like nobody else really had that experience. >> yes, and it's okay where you are now and i know that you'll be dealing with a loss. >> it wasn't until a few months ago that i realized that i'm allowed to enjoy my life. i'm not angry about what happened to me for those two years that i was at teen mania, but i'm angry about the last -- the ten years following that, that i didn't think i could enjoy my life.

and all of the crushing guilt and condemnation that i lived with, you know, that was ten years of my life, you know, all of my 20s. >> yeah. everybody's way of getting through this experience as healing, everybody's recovery is going to be different. and there's no cookie cutter way to do it. >> yeah. i don't even want to go home. because this has been so helpful and i feel like when i go back home i'm just going to be stuck. >> uh-huh. >> or like -- i mean, a back pedal. >> i think the reality is, that's part of the isolation that you feel coming out of -- i mean, i was so lonely the first year out of the honor academy because nobody could relate to me. and that's not easy. it is hard.

>> i think the weekend went really well. it gave me ideas of things that i still need to be aware of in any life in terms of recovery and i think it was just encouraging to be able to see the girls talk freely about things that maybe they hadn't been able to share with people before. and we had a really good camaraderie together. and i think that's always healing when you can be around people that are supportive. >> this weekend was really good because it was a safe environment and i could really talk about my experience at the honor academy and i didn't feel awkward or uncomfortable or people were judging me or not understanding and i think that's the kind of environment that i need to be in in order to really recover.